Refreshing The Ubuntu Brand

The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme “Light”. We’ve developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.

Ubuntu has seen a tremendous amount of growth and change since it was conceived in 2004. Back then it was a small project with strong ambitions and a handful of developers passionate about delivering a world class Linux Operating System that can compete on every level with Microsoft and Apple. We adopted a style based on the tagline “Linux for Human Beings”, and called it “Human”. Six years on we have made incredible progress. Ubuntu is a global phenomenon: we have carved out a pervasive culture of quality and design, thoughtful usability and great technology all fused together in a project that maintains the same commitment to community and collaborative development that we embraced back in 2004.

In 2009, a small team lead by Mark Shuttleworth, conducted a review of our key brand values and identity. Based on that work, a set of visual treatments were produced, and shared with key members of the Ubuntu Art community, spanning the core distributions, derivatives, and aligned efforts like the Forums. Representatives from Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, SpreadUbuntu and more came to London and worked with the Canonical design team to refine the designs and work together. The results of that work are presented here.

This collection of community representatives worked with the design team and created some great work. Some examples:

In addition to this we also worked with our key governance boards: the Community Council, Technical Board, Forums Council, LoCo Council and others around this work to ensure that our community can use it to it’s best advantage.

Brand Values

The key values we believe are reflected in the Ubuntu project are:

Precision. We ship high quality software, and we ship it exactly on schedule. Our Debian heritage means that the individual components of our platform are tightly defined and neatly arranged. There is no excess, no fat, and no waste in Ubuntu. We are a community that thrives on delivery.

Reliability. We are building Ubuntu for serious use. Whether it is being deployed on the desktop or in the cloud, we care that Ubuntu is secure, reliable and predictable. We deliver updates to Ubuntu that are rigorously tested. When we make a mistake, we learn from it and put in place good processes to ensure that it does not happen again.

Collaboration. Ubuntu is the result of collaborative work between thousands of people, and it is both the beneficiary and the public face of the collaborative work of tens of thousands of free software developers who build individual upstream components, or aggregate them in Debian. We go to great lengths to ensure that anybody, anywhere, who is passionate about Ubuntu and competent to participate, can do so. We enable virtual participation in our physical Ubuntu Developer Summits, we use mailing lists and IRC in preference to over-the-cubicle-wall communications, and we welcome contributions from both companies and individuals. Our governance bodies reflect the diversity of that participation, and leadership or permissions are based on proven merit, not corporate employment.

Freedom. We strive to deliver the very best free software platform. Our highest mission is to accelerate the adoption and spread of free software, to make it the de facto standard way that people build and consume software. We celebrate the work of other groups committed to collaborative content development, and open content licensing. While we are pragmatic about this (we ship proprietary drivers when we believe they are a requirement to get free software working well on PC’s) we expressly do not include any proprietary applications in the default installation of Ubuntu. We want people to love and appreciate free software, and even though we work to make sure that Ubuntu is compatible with, certified with and iteroperable with popular proprietary software, we do so to facilitate the adoption of free alternatives to proprietary solutions.

While the branding has changed, the freedoms and rights have not: our global community will still maintain access to the resources needed to construct logos that use the branding. We will be providing the new font, images, colour specs, and a set of recommendations for creating branding for websites, t-shirts and the other needs of our community. As before we will protect the integrity of the Ubuntu brand with the Ubuntu Trademark Policy.

Light: Ubuntu is Lightware

The new style in Ubuntu is inspired by the idea of “Light”.

We’re drawn to Light because it denotes both warmth and clarity, and intrigued by the idea that “light” is a good value in software. Good software is “light” in the sense that it uses your resources efficiently, runs quickly, and can easily be reshaped as needed. Ubuntu represents a break with the bloatware of proprietary operating systems and an opportunity to delight to those who use computers for work and play. More and more of our communications are powered by light, and in future, our processing power will depend on our ability to work with light, too.

Historical perspective: From 2004-2010, the theme in Ubuntu was “Human”. Our tagline was “Linux for Human Beings” and we used a palette reflective of the full range of humanity. Our focus as a project was bringing Linux from the data center into the lives of our friends and global family.

[…] new brand has been announced and documented which shows the significant work that has gone into the Ubuntu brand refresh. […]

http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/ Jay

The branding is really on point, but the new GTK themes are disappointing.

daelsta

very nice, when will it hit the repos?

jono

I imagine over the next few days.

jono

Really? I think they look the bomb.

Jimbo

I much prefer the darker one. I could quite happily use that without any additional tweaking, which I’ve never been able to say of any other theme (even the added ones like Dust).

I too wondered about moving the controls to the other corner. Not saying I don’t like it, but just wondered if there was some usability reason for it.

Max

Not too crazy about the theme; I agree with bill, the window controls look odd.

The new font, the website and the bootsplash, however, are stunning

http://techpad.co.uk Matt

These look superb, Jono! I just took a look at the Brand page on the Wiki and the new websites also look much more sophisticated, classy and modern. Really, really impressed with the hard work that’s clearly gone into this project. I hope it brings the community plenty of new users!

http://athene8.tumblr.com/ RickP

Speaking and an average end user who moved our household over to Ubuntu 2.5 years ago, I wholly embrace the change. Looks wonderful and is puts forth an image of evolving and changing Ubuntu.

http://www.io41.com/ Tim

It looks wonderful. I noticed there’s no bar at the bottom. What happens to minimised windows?

Leandro

The bottom bar is not there for any particular reason? Or there won’t be one now?

Beautiful work!

yman

The GTK and windeco themes are okay. They are not worse than what was there before, but I think we can do much better.

The purple background might cause people to confuse Ubuntu with Macintosh.

The new logo is disappointing when compared to the old, but is a good choice for the new look. The old logo would look odd in the new context.

Jimbo

I just worked out why the controls have been moved to the left corner… So they don’t interfere with the notification pop ups.

marxjohnson

I have to say that I preferred the old font, but the new theme and concept art look fantastic, and the whole concept sits well with me as an ubuntu user.

It’s quite a bold move to take such a strong stance regarding free software (especially in the face of criticism over proprietary drivers etc) but I for one really appreciate the unashamed pragmatism expressed here.

Good job to all of you. Here’s to 10.04!

http://www.rcalderon.es Ramón

I’m with Max here. New logo, website mockups, bootsplash… everything looks really really cool, very stylish, elegant and fashion. Not so sure about the themes, though. But anyway, at least they’re better than the current ones in my opinion. So this is definitely an overall improvement for Ubuntu look. Keep up the great work!

Great work! I also can’t help but notice the “lucid”-“light” linguistic link. Will this appear in 10.4? As a user of both Ubuntu and Mac OSX, I appreciate the new window controls positioning :-).

jono

These bits haven’t landed yet. That’s why.

http://blog.jakubrusinek.pl/ Livio

I love the changes. I’m not a fan of Ubuntu. I actually dislike it but these changes bring some visual improvement.

Overall appearance seems more modern. less cluttered and playing well together.

The purple colour is also very nice, much more than boring brown.

Welcome, new Ubuntu (; !

http://tedwise.com Ted Wise

The light colored one is strongly reminiscent of OS/X.

http://www.artofcomplaint.com b1ackcr0w

It does look fabulous. You can tell a lot of thought talent and work has gone into it.

There is one detail that makes me recoil a bit. This might be a personal prejudice. But I don’t like that the some of the words have not been capitalised when they should be.

It’s a theme that been almost ubiquitous for about 10 years in graphic design. And I understand that most people are not bothered by it. But I do think there are quite a few people like me who find it hugely irritating. For me it’s tantamount to admitting that looking good is more important than right.

Daryl

Looks good overall, but I’m not a fan of the window controls being on the right, will that be changeable?

[…] few releases have been more orange than brown, it was time for a new look. Jono Bacon has made an exciting announcement on his blog, with pictures, of the upcoming new look. I like it. Share and […]

Vladimir Melo

I´m very glad with Canonical assault because design and social network are important points to users.
Maybe it would be even more interesting if we could choose the side of window border icons (making both options).

I hope they make it easy to put the minimise/maximise/close buttons back on the right.

jono

Looking good is more important than being right, that is why I am often confused for Brad Pitt.

Seriously, though: not sure what I can do about that – the lowercase has all been part of the Ubuntu brand.

afonit

All looks excellent except for the window controls going to the other side. I strongly would recommend against that being on the default theme. It looks visually annoying at has adds a subconscious stress to using the computing environment – reducing calm and productivity, thus sapping energy.

Jimbo

Mac OS X is my main OS that I use 16 hours a day, it don’t look nothing like the new theme.

Emmanuel

The window controls won’t be on the left-hand side by default, right?

I sure hope not…

The Ubuntu refresh will take getting used to, but it does look very professional.

It’ll have to grow on me–I really do like the look but I miss the colors of the circle of friends logo. But it will be exciting to see the very lovely, fresh font for the Ubuntu brand. And the bootsplash looks clean!

I’m really glad that Canonical produced examples of branded products, since that really helps me think of the new look. I’d scribble in one of those notepads!

I’d love to hear the reason behind moving the controls from the right of the window to the left. The close button is especially fugly.

I really don’t care much for the theme, but you should just stick with humanity icons, they are much better.

The rest is okay.

http://www.o-biz.dk Martin Pihl

Awesome job. 10.04 is really going to be a leap forward

http://www.nhaines.com/ Nathan Haines

P.S., I really dislike having window resize controls in the top-left corner of the window decorations.

alex

OSX11?

this guy

The wannalooklikeMac mentality is sickening

this thing goes beyond plagiarism

http://flavors.me/gamerchick02 gamerchick02

Wow, the new branding is awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

Amy

F30

I can agree with the others:
Everything looks just great, besides the new GTK theme.

Here’s where that comes from in my opionion:
There’s a hard break between the window decoraion and the actual content, in both the dark and the light.
The border looks very cool and smooth, but when it comes to the menu bar and the icons, they don’t really fit in.
The whole design seems very cautious and then these nice but colurful icons just leap to my eye annoyingly.

Which way to go then?
I, for one, liked Izo’s Nautilus Mockup very much.
That’s not a completely fair comparison as he left out the menu bar, but you could easily add one to it.

d2kx

Yeah, like the others have said, no need to comment on the website/logo/bootsplash/CD design as they are top of the game, absolutely great. The dark Ubuntu theme looks really nice, especially the gnome-panel, wow, but the rest, especially the window controls, not too amazing. The light theme isn’t really amazing. I also wonder how you will be able to keep the new design with Gnome 3.

Tibault

Awesome, finally window controls on the left!
I’ve been putting them there myself for a year now and it’s so much easier to reach than on the right side.

Keep em on the left

marxjohnson

I believe the top left of the screen tends to be the initial focus point (in left-to-right reading countries, at least) so it makes sense to have controls the controls there.

I certainly always move mine there, speeds me up a bit as I’m not moving to one corner for the application’s menus then the other side for the window’s controls. I’m sure they’ll remain editable though!

Matthew

The theme looks alright for the most part, but what’s up with the buttons on the metacity? They’re hideous.

I’m not talking about them being on the left side, I think that’s an interesting change and I’m looking forward to trying it out. But the actual style, especially the red close button…shudder I feel like I’m in 1994 again.

Navneeth

I am not really bothered with what colours Ubuntu ships with, as I will change it anyway. Having said that, they had better not make the buttons to the left as a permanent feature, for I will abandon the distro immediately. (Yeah, I could probably edit using gconf-editor even if they did, but that wouldn’t indicate better usability — now, would it? :))

Luca

The new logo is fantastic!
I like the new Metacity theme, especially the lighter one, but I dislike window controls on the left part of the window.

lxskllr

Terrible idea. Windows is blue, OSX is grey, and Ubuntu is brown. That’s the natural way, and the way it should always be. The font lost it’s pleasing symmetry also, but that’s less of a concern to me than abandoning the old thematic styles :^/

jono

Bring it!

Stuart

I like the new theme. Will there be a change of default font for Lucid?

I think it is a great time for a theme refresh, but I have to agree, the themes are not that different from what has been around for that last ten years. They look to cartoonish (think Windows XP) and bloated. Look at all that wasted space. Thank goodness I can change the theme easily, I will personally look for something more professional looking (some version of New Wave maybe). Thanks for the effort though.

http://www.canol.info Canol Gokel

I liked the new look of the OS and the Ubuntu brand overall. Though some things on the OS screenshots looks too “noticeable”.

In the screenshots of the new themes, the place where toolbars are, look a little bit messy. It is like the buttons are all over the place (Somehow Launchpad came to my mind when writing this sentence :)). In 9.10, there is a separator line below the toolbar buttons which makes it look more organised.

Also I didn’t like the look of the dropdown box (the dropdown box of “Icon View” for example) and the very dark buttons of path indicator (“ubuntu/Pictures”) and others (“Help” button on unfocused window) which doesn’t fit the theme at all.

I’m wondering why the three little buttons of the window decorations are moved to left. They don’t look “much better” and one can accidentally press “Close” button instead of pressing “Edit” menu, easily. I think having them on right is most convenient and there is no need to do such tricks to have a beautiful theme.

The rest of the new look is beautiful. Thank you very much for the hard effort to bring us the most beautiful OS in the world!

close button not at the corner of the window? u mad? never heard of fitz’s law?

maxxxx

Fitts’s law

Rahul Sundaram

I would be curious to understand the process behind this theme Is this Canonical doing it or is there some sort of community involvement?

Donny

I’m usually very tolerant to similarities and tend to frown when people accuse certain themes of ripping off others. However, the similarity between the second screenshot and OSX Leopard’s default look (even the background color, as it can be seen in http://celettu.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/osx-leopard.png) is perplexing. To the point where I’m even worried about eventual lawsuits.

That’s not an open font, is it? It looks like it’s been modified as the ‘xubuntu’ rendering has different letters than the final ‘ubuntu’ rendering – the ‘t’ fully crosses and the ‘n’ has a stem in the ‘xubuntu’ one but neither is the case in the ‘ubuntu’ one. (the ‘spread ubuntu’ graphic’s ‘n’ also has a stem.) It looks like modifications on top of maybe Solo Sans, PF Beau Sans, maybe Xenu, none of which are open fonts. Are you intending to release the font as an open font as was done with AndyFitz’s original ubuntu-titlefont design?

hmmm

hmm looks like ubuntu is copying more and more mac styl hmm

David

The old desktop theme looked better to me but I don’t really mind. However putting the buttons on the other side is really a no-go. For the vast majority of users the buttons have been on the right eversince, no matter what operating system they used. Working against peoples’ habits and expectations is really bad usability.

http://vadi.openid.com Vadim P.

This is great.

http://www.bufferoverflow.it Matteo

Jono where can i download the new Light theme? I upgraded my Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 but there is no visual change. The theme looks great but it is really too Mac OS X inspired imho.

dendron

The “ubuntu qa” logo is disgusting, like it was done by an unimaginative teenager in GIMP in 5 minutes.

Couldn’t you do something like ring-buoy, separated in 3 sections like ubuntu logo?

I don’t like fonts either, especially “a” in “spread”.

dendron

The “ubuntu qa” logo is disgusting, like it was done by an unimaginative teenager in GIMP in 5 minutes.

Couldn’t you do something like ring-buoy, separated in 3 sections like ubuntu logo?

I don’t like fonts either, especially “a” in “spread”.

P.S.: sorry. if it’s double-post.

Martin

Finally, looks smashing!

twilightomni

Rahul:

I believe the wiki page mentions that it was kind of a “Jedi Council” effort – with specific members drawn from different Ubuntu art communities.

It goes without saying of course that the merit of a design isn’t related to how many people are involved with it. I believe that’s the point you were trying to address.

http://www.digitalside.com.br Digital Side

Just did not like the buttons to close, maximize and minimize the left.

Caldevil

Please change the close button position. Either make it rightmost or leftmost. Current position is stupid from a usability point of view.

http://www.kungfoocode.org Anton

I like the colors, especially the purpleish tone.
The only thing which I’m not found of is the buttons on the left (especially with the window title on the left as well) and the fonts.

http://blog.phpwnage.com Kevin Lange

It’s going to take some time to get used to the new font, but I like where things are going.

I like the new themes, but moving window controls to the left could have unforeseen consequences for new users.

http://wombatdiet.net Eats Wombats

First reaction: all you need is a dock and this looks a little like an OSX knock off.

Please reconsider the placement of the Windows controls. I am sure someone will hack things to make this arrangement optional but we don’t need yet another binary decision in Linuxland, as we have with KDE and Gnome, or do we?

If anyone was paid to write that guff about brand values it was too much.

Isaiah Heyer

When are the websites going to be updated with this new branding?

Cash

When will the distro alphas receive the new look?

http://guiodic.wordpress.com Guido

theme is awesome. Really.

But I have 2 aemendaments:

1) please, put windows buttons on the right. Or make this thig a user choice at least

2) icons color does not match with the rest.

And I have a question: where is the bottom panel?

Pierre-Luc Auclair

I really like where it’s going, but the typography really needs a kick in the good direction.

I think it really works well on a dark background but on white it’s a bit spread apart, especially at larger sizes. Also I don’t think the t looks taller at all to justify the longer ascender of the b. I also think the arm of the t looks a bit odd. But I think the whole thing is a good start but it just needs a bit of perfecting.

Also the spread font is really terrible, the letters really don’t align at all vertically. Although it could be a hinting issue, this needs to be fixed (and afaik Inkscape doesn’t do hinting).

As for the themes, I really like the new purple ! The window control icons really need work because they aren’t well integrated so far.

I would say the highlight color (caramel-like) in the dark theme lacks contrast with the white text. I would make it gray with about the same amount of contrast relative to the dark gray as the light theme.

I’ve read about people trash-talking about the tray icons looking too much like everybody else, but I think it’s a good idea to go with familiarity. And anyway, there aren’t 10000 ways to make a bluetooth icon looks like a bluetooth icon and the upward wave symbol everybody knows it (for wifi).

It’s a good step overall in the right direction, I just hope some changes will make it before the release that’s supposed to be really soon. Congrats, I know how much work this all is !

Xenion

I like the new font, but having the buttons on the left side is a very bad idea. Mac OS is the ugliest modern operating system/GUI I’ve seen out of the box, please don’t try to copy it.

But…

Considering they all use the font and have a word in common, those five logos couldn’t look more unrelated if they tried. Fail.

Bob Mottram

I agree that moving the min/max/close buttons to the left hand side of the window is a failure to consider usability issues, unless some very significant case can be made for having them there. Whilst this makes no difference to someone like myself, many users are less flexible in their expectations of how windows should behave. If Ubuntu wants to attract more Microsoft emigrants it’s probably worthwhile keeping the basic user interface expectations similar so that the transition is as intuitive as possible.

http://reddit.com reddit

If I wanted OSX, I’d buy a fucking mac. Put the window option buttons back in the right corner ffs.

jono

The font will be openly licensed and is still in production and not expected to be fully completed until the end of March. The font designer, who is apparently one of the best font designers in the world, focused on the letters for the Ubuntu wordmark, hence things being a little different.

jono

It is not out yet, but will be in Lucid soon.

jono

As they are done, one at a time.

http://openattitude.com Andrew

I dunno, I still see a little bit of brown in those screens…

Cash

do the nightly builds have the new theme?

chris

I really like the new font, but I wish the logo was the same height as the font-height Having it as superscript seems to be pushing the logo out of the way and focusing on the font…

Other than that I really like how clean it looks now. Congrats! Change is always hard!

z

definetely the right direction. As already mentioned the window buttons should go to the right though, this is way to osx-ish. And the gradients look very semi-pro and “blury”. Have a look at the gradients of the shiki-colors theme, much sharper and professional looking: http://drop.io/wykl6hs#

blankthemuffin

Wondering if there’s an icon refresh included? To me they’re starting to look a bit stale when compared to the new stuff in the notification area.

The new theme still looks like a lot of the same to me also, some things specifically like the arrows on the drop downs and path bar.

Obviously it needs some work but the widgets and icons in the screenshots here makes me think we’re still back in 2000.

dustin

Hey Jono,

Is there any chance we can see the login screen? I think the 9.04 login screen was very professional/clean whereas the 9.10 login screen didn’t quite hit the mark.

An even better idea would be to have a tool to let you change the login screen!

Thanks for the great work btw!

Dustin

http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2010/03/03/the-new-ubuntu-lucid-look-an-appraisal/ The New Ubuntu Lucid Look: An Appraisal · kbps

[…] Jono Bacon […]

Ralf

Brilliant. I hope you guys default to the black panels.

Three things:

icon colors don’t match

the close button should be either at the left or right, as we use that one the most!

where’s the bottom panel? Is that another suprise? Are we going to get a dock? gnome-do dock perhaps? That would be brilliant!

anon

Overall this is a good change. The colors are nice, and the font is pretty fitting for Ubuntu’s style.
I don’t really understand why some people seem to think that any modern-looking theme is an OSX ripoff. The above links to OSX’s screenshot do not resemble the new Ubuntu desktop at all.

Oh, and the window buttons on the right? Please reconsider.

snkix

Well it is a new theme, something Ubuntu users have been waiting for for a long time now. But could it look any more like OSX? I understand Mark S. said that mac was the benchmark in beauty (debatable) but does that mean we have to clone it?

Duncan Snowden

Nobody ever gets window buttons right these days. There’s more to GUI ergonomics than Fitts’ law.

The close button should be on the opposite side to everything else, to minimize the risk of accidental clicking. Apple used to understand this, then inexplicably followed the dumb Microsoft pattern about ten years ago, jamming all the buttons together, only differentiating itself by placing them on the opposite side.

Fortunately this is Linux, and the layout can be configured with gconf-editor (if you’re using Gnome; KDE and Xfce have it in their standard preferences). It’s one of the first things I do with a new install.

Duncan Snowden

I should add that otherwise it looks great.

pt

I like the black panel options it lets the light coloured application standout from the menus and background.

w1nGNutz

I’ll copy my comment posted on OMGUbuntu here. To me, it’s almost there (60%) but still needs improvements. Check it out:

DON’T-KNOW: controls on left (I really beleive they should be close to the scroll bar), new splash (I still don’t know if it’s better or worst than black), bottom bar (are you planning something else here?).

QUESTIONS: 1. No bottom bar, where open windows will be? 2. Controls on left, will they keep it there? 3.

It seems there’s still work to do but, apart from the default font and default icons, it’s by far the best them I’ve seen to date. It’s original and keeps ubuntu’s identity. And thanx, it doesn’t look like Mac.

w1nGNutz

Why don’t you try to use/adapt the new font to these new themes? The default font really sux.

Harold

I don’t want the buttons on the left. Thats a Microsoft thing, if I wanted to have windows layout stuff I would run windows and not ubuntu.
I run ubuntu because I don’t want windows, so stop trying to be or look like windows.

http://dylanmccall.blogspot.com/ Dylan McCall

I love the new branding.
Some don’t, but I like the superscript logo in there. It has a certain lightness to it that’s really interesting.

As for the desktop, I’m looking forward to a more “official” screenshot of the theme inside the (current) default desktop experience to get a better idea how it fits together.

I feel that the top panel icons have made a sudden turn in the wrong direction here. Some of them (though not all) have extra shading going on, making the whole thing busier. They don’t feel as tidy and consistent as the monochromatic style introduced in Karmic.
Also, each icon seems to have a different margin, which may actually be the core reason I’m perceiving it this way. Granted, it’s a bit early to be making that kind of judgement
(Now if only indicator-applet cropped the icons and handled all the margin stuff itself).

Harold

I meant a Mac not Microsoft with the button thing…

Kevin

Put the buttons back on the right hand side where they belong. Stop trying to copy OSX…

Sara

It looks pretty good. I’m sure that users who complain are smart enough to install fonts and themes they like better.

http://www.avoidinspace.com ash

I love the new look!
especially the titlebar icons on the left side

http://yokozar.livejournal.com Scott Ritchie

I think it looks nice, but I’m concerned about usability.

I am really not happy with the position of the window controls. In OSX it doesn’t matter much as you quit programs with the menu bar. In Windows and the old Ubuntu it makes sense as it’s near the scroll bar and you can actually close the window from both sides if you want (although on the left requires two clicks).

The current position is, bluntly, the worst possible.

David

I miss the symmetry of the old font. What was wrong with it? I also don’t like the strange glossy rounder look at the very top of the title bar.

Is there a reason why the window buttons were moved to the left, or is that just how they happened to be configured for the person who took the screenshots? Having such a destructive action (the Close button) so close to other more common functionality can be very dangerous. Someone aiming at ‘File’ or at some button could accidentally close the window—a problem that doesn’t exist with the Close button on the right. (As for Minimize and Maximize/Restore, their position doesn’t really matter as much.)

Steve

I think a change of look will be nice, but it isn’t important to me. I love Ubuntu because it works.

trowe

The window control button placement is a horrible idea. Other than breaking Fitts law, what happens if someone overshoots the edit menu by a touch? Click, close. Oops. Please change this.

Vincent

The right top corner is for the window icon, it’s crowded with the window controls as well. I’d much prefer it to be on the standard top left.

Also please don’t get rid of a standard taskbar. Ubuntu isn’t mac, and there is no reason to hide away opened windows.

Kyle Saunders

I can appreciate all the hard work that went into this new theme, but I have to say — judging from these screen shots — that I am disappointed.

I agree with the consensus that the window controls are ridiculous. I’m sure there’s a way to change them back, but I imagine this will be a huge turn-off to new users. Fitt’s Law, anyone?

I have other, aesthetic-based beefs with this theme, but they are purely opinion. I will give this a shot, of course, but as of this point I remain skeptical.

http://www.milnu.com/3/sthapit sthapit

love the new look – def gets my vote.

Igor

Never been a mac fan, so I suppose it is just natural I don’t like the new theme.

However, as long as one can change it, I can live with it.
(I hope they will continue to include the 9.10 theme… I quite like it)

http://holloway.co.nz/ Matthew Holloway

Looks great and is a welcome advancement for Ubuntu aside from the window widgets.

http://darrylclarke.com/ Darryl

Looks good!

And for all those complaining, remember, you can customize it yourself. Most of the historic themes are still around.

http://darkwall.net darkwall

I agree, the bar and some of the icons looks like they are ripping off Mac OS X. Though that is not necessarily a bad thing and I tend to say the Apple has good visual design. And the design does many unique and distinctive parts so it still remains distinct. No happy with with title bars. I’m not apposed to change but moving buttons around will throw me off especially as I may use several distros of linux and windows on any given day.

realgt

i love linux because i can make it look like whatever i want and not care what the ‘default’ theme is.

new users that care will find a way to modify it to their liking, anyway.

fwiw, this ugly theme will never see my emerald desktop

stoiccola

People naturally like earth tones.
Orange, Brown, Green.

Purple is more mornful. Green more health related.

Could this be a sign?

Dylan

This concerns the color scheme and default background. I prefer the brown look. It was clean and peaceful, and I felt excited about a design that used shades of brown intelligently and discussed it with my graphic design friends. This does look a bit macish, but mostly like it’s trying to be a garish sunset. Playing with light is a little tired; Caravaggio has long since given way to Thomas Kinkade. I will probably keep the old ibex as my background.

Also, I do prefer a upper-right corner for my window management buttons.

Hey, did you hear they enabled genie in compiz again? Don’t have to take ghex2 to the binaries anymore

ethana2

Sorry, I don’t have thousands of dollars to throw around.

ethana2

Or at least copy the GOOD parts like the global menu and leave the rest alone..

ethana2

We really shouldn’t be moving those around, there’s no good reason to. That’s going to throw everybody off, and it’s going to make ubuntu seem positively foreign to Windows users.

Archiver

Nice position for the buttons, though it’ll take the luddites a while to get used to them. At least I accidentally close an app while scrolling.
True they are vaguely similar to OSx, but what’s so different from the original’s copy of MS Windows?
If people want Windows, there’s nothing to stop them going back.

Archiver

Nice position for the buttons, though it’ll take the luddites a while to get used to them. At least I won’t accidentally close an app while scrolling. True they are vaguely similar to OSx, but what’s so different from the original’s copy of MS Windows? If people want Windows, there’s nothing to stop them going back.

(typo corrected version)

jrk

maybe you should fix the broken usability of linux-desktops first before playing with color-esoterics.

ethana2

I’m glad to see they’re willing to make some drastic changes.

Put the window controls back and move us to a global menu bar instead. It’s the only way to catch up to the elegance of the mac. Let them keep their dock; it requires compositing.. but the global menu bar takes visual noise out of windows, it makes it like 5 times easier to use because of Fitt’s law, and apps like Nautilus 3.0 and Google Chrome are already being lobotomized for the sake of elegance anyways.

That’s the plan moving forward? Rip the menu bar out of nautilus with nowhere to put it? Looks nice, but I do need access to the functionality..

aten

can’t agree more. Kind of strange to read that this “new” style reflect something. The old Ubuntu logo was also better imho.

Clark

Great work! I think it’s a job well done. I look forward to the new release!

user

All good with the new iCandy. The look and positioning of desktop elements should be under user control, with good hints and building materials supplied of course. Much more vital than new pixel colorations, will 10.x fix regression issues introduced in 9.x ? Example – including the incomplete and unfinished work called ‘grub2′ into the distro – that one is a show stopper folks!

horaceTheRed

There has always been a tool to change the login screen: System->Administration->Login Window.

Jim

Looks good! But I do agree with some of the others that (by default) the window buttons should stay on the right. Also, the red color on the close button is not necessary, nor is it aesthetically pleasing. Take the red away. The X is enough to let us know it’s the close button. Other than that I love the brand refresh. Great Work!

tej

Re-branding is fine but whole color and button scheme looks like mac
Make KDE look like Windows and Gnome like Mac, its terrible idea.

Mel

In all the blogs I’ve read this new branding thing most people like the new website and logos but the theme is something people hate, especially the left hand window controls. I respect the decision, but we, the community have spoken, we want the window controls to the right. Moving them to the left should be an option for the people that like that.

Personally, I don’t like the themes, almost no one have liked the old default ubuntu themes, but what the hell, that seems to be our tradition, and there are plenty of good looking themes out there anyway.

Chuck

Please, no. 90% of the world and I have been clicking Close in the upper right of each window for just about 20 years now.

The Mac-like style SHOULD be available. It should NOT be default, for all the reasons already stated ad nauseum in these comments.

http://ttgale.com Tyler

I like the new look of the theme, I was never a huge fan of “human”. I do agree with the others about the close, minimise and maximise button placement. It works on a mac, because the “file, edit, etc” buttons are at the top of the screen away from those buttons. Is the taskbar absence intentional?

Colors: No, I don’t like the purplish wallpaper, though I like the (visible) control color schemes. I do, however, like the light-source effect on the wallpaper. Perhaps with another color… Idea: the cycling-wallpaper-set (e.g. space pics) in Karmic was an innovation all right. Perhaps it’s too late for Lucid, but maybe in a later Ubuntu, “masks” could make an appearance – kind of like a GIMP layer.. an overly with varying transparency, to produce a gradient, or other effects – like the “light-source” in the screenshot above. In Appearance Preferences > Background, user gets to choose:

Image for ‘background layer’

Mask (from a number of presets)

(optional) a mask color, which can change the mask’s effect, to match the background image

(optional) transparency level of the mask

Window controls: Echoing others’ concern, I hope the default location for window controls will continue to be the (user’s) RHS of the title bar, where people are used to finding it… and that the screenshot shows a personal customization on the test install. The biggest problem will be users who “memorize a series of buttons to press to get whatever result they want” (from a recent /. story, which phenomenon I have observed in real life). These non-tech-savvy people WILL be stumped all over again – “how do I get out of my Solitaire game?” and more, if the controls they have memorized are suddenly yanked somewhere else. For people who like the window controls on the left… THEY can easily customize it from the default, as no doubt they have been doing over the past several versions of Ubuntu.

http://it-tactics.blogspot.com Martin Wildam

Please bring back the Minimize, Maximize and close buttons on the right top! – Or have them on both sides (left and right) if you wish.

And hell, where is the task bar?!?!?!

From the rest I prefer the light theme over the dark one.

http://it-tactics.blogspot.com Martin Wildam

The – especially new – standard user will not customize much of the theme.

And I hated it in Windows that nearly every option is by default set in a way I don’t liked it.

Don’t want to become Ubuntu either.

ethana2

You know, I’m seeing screenshots both ways, so I think this might just be Jono’s personal settings.

http://Windowbuttonstotherightplease Charles

I’d like the close/minimize/restore buttons to the right.

Paul

I don’t think there is an edit button however if you want to change it back, alt+f2>gconf-editor>and then go down the menus till u find ‘metacity’>general> and on the right you see close maximize etc and you just edit those

akshat

I like the new look but the light theme’s window borders and buttons on the left side in Both GKT Themes Fuckingly Sucks

If to get really serious, they should choose one side for the window control buttons and stick with it for eternity. This issue is NOT just to wink away with a “Cool, new theme! But I can change it anytime”-comment. The big competitors to Ubuntu, Windows and Mac OS, has learned this a long time ago. People knows how it looks like and exactly how to use it. I’m not saying this theme change is a bad thing (personally, I think the lighter one is actually beautiful), but for the average user, this should seen as very major upgrade! Newbies will find it hard to see why the buttons are moved if they would change that again.
“Why did they change the computer? They said Ubuntu was free and easy to use, but they change my computer all the time! I want my other computer back! What was it called again, Windows something..”

Angelo

Colours are lame. Purple assosciates with poison and evil. Plus it is far too unnatural a colour. Humans aren’t really meant to stare at purple. Blue green brown black are really the only safe bets (For a standard theme). Purple yellow and red are off. I mean purple/yellow were used by royalty since they were rare. And red has bad associations (at a brain chemistry level even!).

If I had a vote I’d have gone with green. Way nicer to stare at for a bunch of hours straight.

yman

I agree. The design of the desktop theme is far behind those of of the bootsplash and the Ubuntu-related websites. Also, what will the GDM (login screen) theme look like?

name

I see no differences except for the horrible placement of the window controls. Ubuntu trying to find it’s own identity is a great idea but moving the window controls just so it’s different from Windows it just lame.

LinuxLady

I enjoy the color purple. I like the colors here, there’s still some brownish to it for those getting ruffled by the lack of it. The window control thing is better for me in the right, but they say if you change something you force your brain to learn again and it won’t get too lazy, so, I’ll deal with it. Thanks for making it softer and more feminine. Love it!

[…] 4, 2010 Some of you may have seen the new Ubuntu branding which was announced today. I think it looks fantastic, I love the new logo font and the new colour scheme, I love the new […]

WOWOWOW

Purple and orange and makes it professional? LOL!
Purple and brown as “light”? Are you on crack?
This color scheme just sucks.

Marek

Purple is weird as backgroud colour. I think that anybody who likes purple the most should seek help of psychiatrist.

Glubbdrubb

Guys, this is the wrong place to gripe about this sort of thing.

Subscribe to the Ayatana email group if you want to make a difference.

http://benfell.livejournal.com/ David Benfell

I’m sorry, but I really like earth tones. Purple just doesn’t do it for me. I’m definitely going to be interested in the theme options.

http://serge.matveenko.ru Serge Matveenko

At last! Window controls at left. I’m really tired to put them there every time after fresh install:)

But I use “close” button as first one, window menu then, and i have pin button in the upper right conner and all other buttons is at the right too.

Sam

I personally have no problem with where the window controls are.

I enjoy the new look, can’t wait for Ubuntu to get rid of the ‘poo’ colour scheme

Love the rounded GTK theme, looks very flowing.

Really don’t like the default icon spacing, it leaves the (file/folder) icons inefficiently far apart.
I can see that as something everyone will change as soon as they install the OS, so why not have it right from the word go!

NetFox

I agree that this issue – not a fountain.
And my Ubuntu, dressed in a leopard skin with the help Mac4Lin and screwed Cairo Dock looks a lot better.
But I do not believe his version of the ideal design – others may like and others.

I think you misunderstand Fitt’s Law… Fitt’s Law basically says that UI-elements in the edges of the screen are bigger than ones in the middle of the screen. And buttons in screen-corners are even bigger.

Moving the minimize/maximize/close-buttons to other side of the window has nothing to do with Fitt’s Law. And besides, those buttons can’t take advantage of Fitt’s Law in GNOME, since you can’t have those buttons in top of the screen or in the corner, since the top of the screen is occupied by the menubar.

Gabor

About the Desktop theme, I assume this is a very much work in progress
and far from final (I hope).
Anyway, based on these shots/mockups…

Overall

Be careful with those gradients! If overused, the UI becomes cheap-looking.
This current proposal is, unfortunately, more on the cheap side.

Purple is a heavy color. It is more Serious or Calm than Light.

The default 9.10 theme feels much Lighter (except for the global statusbar/menubar
on top).

Usability

Window control buttons:
* Stick to the default. Otherwise it will drive people crazy.
Without a good reason, it may not worth the irritation it might cause to
the majority of the users.

Window title:
* Keep it centered. Otherwise there is just too much text on top of each
other (e.g. in nautilus: toolbar + menubar + titlebar).
Plus, people might develop strabismus if they always look to the left of
the screen We already have enough things aligned to the left (text in
web pages, text in text editors, menus, toolbar icons, …).

Style

Window control buttons:
* It suffers from “Gradient Overdoze”.
* No need to expose it with such look-at-me–i-am-a-cockoo-egg style.
Keep it blended in the window title and when user hovers over them
with the mouse, then they may expose themslves more.

It’s probably nothing and you are NOT using DTL Prokyon, but in an off-chance that you do, there’s still a chance to patch things up.

Jimbo

Yes the new icons are more like Mac, and yes if you move the window controls to the left corner and everyone thinks Mac, but beyond those two things this theme is absolutely nothing like Mac OS X in style, colours, and everything else.

The top is metal coloured, neither of the two Ubuntu themes have metal coloured tops. The side bar is blue, neither of the Ubuntu themes have blue sidebars. The highlight colour and the icons are blue, Ubuntu has no blue in its colour scheme at all.

They are absolutely nothing like each other. Even the window controls are wildly different, even if they do appear in the same left corner.

You are not the first person to say the lighter theme looks exactly like a Mac, but god dammnit you guys must have never seen a Mac before.

Paolo

I don’t like OSX precisely for having a menu at the top, UI buttons at the left and the dockbar. I like the Windows like task bar at the bottom. Either I can reconfigure the desktop to look like it is now or it’s about time to switch to another Gnome based distribution.

oliver

It looks like the “Light” theme is already in use on Macs; so I’m wondering how you want to make the Ubuntu look distinguishable from Mac look.

I really like the Human theme, the brown and orange backgrounds, and the fact that it is boldly different from the blue or grey that is used everywhere else.

I accept that The Marketers have spoken and that getting this decision reverted is likely impossible (seeing how it is announced rather than proposed). But for the record, my vote would go towards Human rather than Light.

ddd

It looks like it is inspired by the latest versions of Windows and OS X. Shame they did not stay with their own, distinguishable colour theme. But well, that is evil-ution, and sooner or later the others will change, and Ubuntu will follow like a trained dog.

http://mimor.be Mimor

Have to say,
I don’t get why they don’t unify the different logo’s more.
So that people don’t have to read anything to quickly see it’s Ubuntu related.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sooperkuh/ Ralph Aichinger

Actually I am a bit saddened, that the old, friendly ubuntu font&logo has to go. The new one looks much more generic to me, and to be frank, i don’t like the huge x-height of the new font.

Zac

I like it, although not all parts are integrated yet.

I prefer the window buttons on the left, it makes sense, lessens mouse movement, and with the power button on top right, having it on the right it was to close to a maximised window close button.

I glad they are willing to try something different.

As for the brown I liked it actually because it was distinctive, so I hope the put a new theme that’s as equally distinctive from all the other OS’s out there. I’m tired of blues and greens.

Wao ,The new themes are beautiful , and will present what Ubuntu always stands for .

Btw my gripe was , why is there so much spacing between the icons in the bar above. Another few and itll reach the center ..
That’ll look ugly.

Andy Fitzsimon

great start, but could & should be a lot better.

obrowny

I am just wondering how easy it is going to be with gnome shell because the left side buttons will be very close to the “activate” gnome-shell… We will have to be very precise while moving the mouse when we want to close a window and not open the shell…
The work is good but I would have liked something less close to mac with its own identity. (like wifi signal which is the same one as mac)
Everybody will say oh it’s nice but it looks like mac … and I don’t want to hear that !!!!

Lesio

It’s a mac rip-off. Not much more.
Would it hurt to be more original?

I don’t mind drastic changes, but this direction is not the way to go.

Please rethink this.

leighman

Looks AWESOME!
Agree that the buttons would be better on the right by default tho!

Major

I have been using many versions of Linux + WinXP/7 plus Snow Leopard.
Ubuntu is a nice install for sure and the kids find it easy to use [apart from Flash].
My biggest grip with Ubuntu [and other distro’s BTW is the wasted space on window tops.. why so big.. Look at Snow Leopard to see thin and sleek it looks – also optimised screen space [on netbooks this is key].

Mac OS really does look thin and sleek.

Think thin, light and sleek…

Good progress all the same.

Mj

http://blog.tquadrado.com pedro mg

I like Gnome for about… can’t remember. Since Ximian ?

Users that don’t pay much attention to UI, tend to only change background image. The others, as usual reconfigure, re-theme, etc. I have UNR 9.10 on this netbook and have to admit changed the theme colors only 4 months after install.

The biggest issue I see in those screen-shots is window controls position, no bottom panel for opened windows and OSX appearance. Since I have a Mac too, no problem. But for users I know, they’ll move the arrow towards top-right for quite some time until get used to the left-top corner.

Yet, this is an advantage for mouse “mileage”. Everything is more compact, no need for so much mouse travel.

Another question is the amount of unused area in the top middle_to_right side. OSX has a button to hide the menu and buttons area. That would really make sense, specially for <= 900px tft’s.

A dobe

What a horrible, asymmetric font for the new logo… It looks bulging and sick compared to the old, round, and symmetric font.

Is there going to be an equivalent Kubuntu / KDE plasma theme using the same palette ?

Or this refreshing only concerns Gnome/Xfce ?

Because Kubuntu is mentionned but I have not see a single mock up who looked like KDE.

Eric

Indeed; OS X has the window controls on the left, but has edit buttons at the top of the screen. (Fitts’s law says their bigger, so you won’t miss the edit button there).

Donny

The wiki page should make crystal clear what is definitive and what is not. It only does that for the CD boxes (explicitly stating that they are not).

Someone in the Ubuntu forums heard somewhere that the buttons positioning and the absence of a bottom panel in the screenshots just happen to be the way the person whose computer the screenshot was taken from happens to like, and not really the default.

I know that “someone somewhere heard” is not a reliable information source, but this possiblity made me notice that the wiki does not help at all in knowing what is final.

Simone

I very like the new font for the logo!
I like the dark violet and orange too!

What I, unfortunately, don’t like:
– controls on right
– light theme + violet desktop
I think that many who will see it as an uglier copy of OSX.

I suggest an orange wallpaper and to edit this(*) theme with the new dark violet palette.

Is Shuttleworth colorblind or something? I was so happy to read about this until I read the words “purple and orange.”

I can’t say this is uglier than brown human– anything is better than that. But this is UGLY AS SIN.

Matus

Yeah, it can be changed. Anything can be changed, you have the sources. The point is that the default should not suck in the first place.

Visually it is very nice, but everyone is used to the X button being top right. There is no point in changing this, it is like a plumbing company connecting the blue facet to hot water just to be cool.

[…] was an announcement today about the Ubuntu theme and branding change. I’m letting the theme digest for a day or two […]

Eggplant

What a ridiculous idea to move the windows buttons to the left! I mean obviously you could place them at the bottom too, and require the user to be upside down while using their computer, but is it a good idea?

Sure, with a couple of hours work for a couple of days, new users can change and customize everything. Likely by reinstalling Windows.

And brown was a genuine piece of Ubuntu branding, now this new color… Looking at it I remembered a wallpaper from the original Sims, Fleur du mort they called it.

Look, there’s a very good reason why everyone goes with the blue. Blue is clean and light and beautiful and upbeat like the sea and the sky. Also, it’s easy on the eyes, especially on people who spend 12 hours a day at their computer.

Speaking of which, I expect the font rendering to remain horrible (blurry, “polished” whatever they call it, it pokes my eyes out), I don’t expect my sound card to work on this new version either, I don’t expect to have a half-decent photo editor… these are the real issues with Ubuntu, imho, not colors and buttons.

Malusk

Hurr hurr. I know there are people would choose an OS just because of a wallpaper.
For better or for worse, let’s prepare to tell them how to open an .exe file.

I agree. Global Menu on the top and DocbarX on the bottom. Still, I like the new dark theme. and think it will be well received.

What’s not so great is that the branding is all over the place. You’ve got the new logo in some places and the old one in other places. The same goes for the font. You’ve even got a couple different oranges in there. It really needs to be more consistent.

The Xubuntu logo, on the other hand, is great, and shows unity with the Ubuntu logo while still showing it is a separate project. Lubuntu and Kubuntu should follow suit.

http://techies-r-us.com.au/blog/ zetheroo

Just a simple “no” from me. Too alike the Mac style of things and, as someone already said, there is no decent reason for the close/max/min buttons to be moved to the left side. Apple do it because they are a closed-off club and so badly want to be special/different even if it hurts them, and other? … they don’t care about the “others”.

We are the complete opposite in that we are an open-to-all club and should reflect that even in our themes – especially an Ubuntu default theme.

http://www.johannes-eva.net/ Johannes

I also would like to raise my voice and shout out loud that the close button on the left is a catastrophic idea.
For myself, I don’t care, but I know a lot of Ubuntu users that will only be confused. People will have TROUBLE getting used to it.
Make a new theme and don’t care if people are disturbed, it that your idea of QA?

More, what are the advantages of the new close window button position? I don’t see any.

Else, I’m happy the human theme is gone! Great job for this!

Casey

It looks like OSX recreated in Mario Paint.

boh

I always arranged my window buttons the old macos way. close on the left near the window name, all the others on the right. Minimizes the accidental close. YMMV. Mac changed that to reflect the windows way, i dunno how they are placed now, but if they did like that it means users coming from windows were confused. So I wouldn’t have changed. The color scheme: i have a reddish sidux which i always switch to violet, it seems more bearable in the long run. Most people know how to change background so it’s not much relevant IMHO

Nordlicht

I really like the new style. Hope that the developers are unimpressed from the critics. Release after release everyone was joking ’bout the new design that was not implemented again, now they do something and this is nobad, too. Stay patient, we will see what it will look like in the final.

Mike Brandt

The best part of linux is the customization. If you don’t like the button placement move them yourself.

jiu

my first reaction when reading was: wow, they’re reducing the size of buttons, making windows thinner… this is great. Then when I look at the images above, I see very little has changed. So much space (screen real estate) wasted to making window border half a centimeter thick etc… The colour change is cool though, as is change in general after 5 years of the same stuff.

http://tedwise.com Ted Wise

Same here. And the menubar was clearly designed to look the same.

Nikola Trifunovic

Purple is royalty. A mysterious color, purple is associated with both nobility and spirituality.

http://www.mazyayan.com maz yayan

yiipiiiieee….. ubuntu don;t use dark anymore. thanks to artwork team.

Bob

Aww, man! I guess I missed my chance to switch to Linux. I had flirted with Linux a few times before, and I liked Ubuntu the best; I was just waiting for WINE to catch up to the latest games a bit more before I could switch for good. But that was when switching just meant learning where they had moved my favorite Windows options to… if I have to learn how to use a Mac at the same time then my impetus to switch just got a lot lower. I guess I’ll just have to see how long I can keep using WinXP.

Why is the rounded window corners still jagged? looks like crap. Its always been the worst looking thing on ubuntu imo. And look at the bottom window corners, they are not even round, uneven in some wierd way.

Hint, try zooming in using compiz (Super + scrollwheel)

Never seen anything like that on OSX for example, it always looks smooth.

John

It doesn’t matter what colour you paint it, you can’t polish a turd

ttyX

It’s macish and I don’t like it

Stefan

From brown to purple? OMG! Please keep on writing great code, but search for a good designer.

diogo

Why Ubuntu is making Mac OS X the pattern(standard) of beauty and usability ?

Why Mac OS X means ‘professional’ ?

Why Ubuntu is taking this path ?

This windows controls really sucks.

The background colors are Apple´s ‘trademark’.

The (9.10) delayed login is really terrible.

This means that I will take more time customizing Ubuntu than any other distribution.

This is not light this is Apple.

I am pretty sure that canonical designers do not use free software.

(See, by this time, you thought: “MAC OS X uses Free software”).

Which OS do you think they use ?

http://flavio.tordini.org Flavio

The GTK+ is still work in progress, right? I guess that scrollbars and window decorations need a finishing touch.

jason

Oh, only? Did you read back what you wrote? I work in desktop support and you lost -me- at alt+f2 let alone the people I’d support if I implemented ubuntu across the board.

http://flavio.tordini.org Flavio

The GTK+ theme is still work in progress, right? I guess that scrollbars and window decorations need a finishing touch.

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

The new light brown theme is nice, and it should be the default.

The new black theme is somewhat edgy, and it should be available, but not default.

The button placement is, frankly, horrible, and should be the same as it’s been in Ubuntu before. It was always easy to tell a user “click the X in the upper right corner to close the app”.

Now you’ll say click the X in the upper left corner, and the user will say there’s to X in the corner. Not to mention the menu bar and the toolbar all being in that area. What was the need to crowd it further?

And the purple desktop color is atrocious. Just make it some new variety of brown for this release.

The defaults are meant to be nice, non-threatening colors that most everyone can use without visceral reactions. They’re meant to just not be noticed, not to say “I’m hip” every moment you’re using your computer.

Ubuntu is nothing without community. At the same time the designers have done a lot of hard work. If they compromise with the community, things will be great. Otherwise you’ll alienate a lot of people. You can’t just keep treating people like they’re cattle being led from one place to another as dumb beasts.

http://www.thomascblack.com Tom Black

I like it! The window function buttons are perfectly placed next to the nautilus windows menus. I also feel like I could do long hours of work in Ubuntu using this theme and not be bothered to change it every so often.

jenningsthecat

It looks pretty, but I think a lot more effort should be put into usability issues, and less into prettiness. For example, fonts that look good and are easy-to-read, (so I don’t have to steal them from Windows yet again), a decent File Manager, (Nautilus ain’t it), and better configuration tools, are much more important than the window dressing shown above.

Speaking of usability, whose idea was it to put the window controls in the upper left corner? The vast majority of people in a whole generation of computer users expects them to be in the upper right corner – why inconvenience almost all of your user base just for the sake of being different?

http://www.flossfreeway.eu.pn Spek

I personally don’t like the background colour. Brown was much safer despite the criticisms.

With window control buttons on the left that area seems crowded whilst the area on the right is clear breeze.

Unless there is some functional or even aesthetic advantage to placing them on the left, please leave them on the right where most people would expect to find them

trowe

Actually, when I refer to the edit menu, I’m talking about the menu bar that is directly below the window controls. The word “edit” is directly below the close button. In retrospect, i should have said undershoot instead of overshoot.

mieses

Some bits are good but it looks like it was designed by 3 or 4 different designers. Design is a product, not a bunch of pieces loosely joined.

http://mikebabcock.ca Michael T. Babcock

I have to agree with everyone else (and yes, Fitt’s law applies) that the buttons near the menus are a horrible idea.

By grouping so many controls into a small space, each has become less pronounced and harder to find.

If each button has its own corner of a window (such as in an ‘okay/cancel dialog box), each button is readily findable and easy to hit.

With this design, I can’t imagine how slow I’ll have to move the mouse to make sure I hit maximize instead of the menu bar, which is typically on a different side of the screen from those icons entirely.

Patman

Please put the buttons on the right, or at least make it an easy option to switch. I like the light and dark options but would not use this as my theme unless the buttons were on the right.

Wander Nauta

The logo’s are nice, but I think the new theme it absolutely horrible. It looks like someone got a quick look at Mac OS X and then tried to recreate it, but with purple accents (?!) and with the buttons jumbled. How are we supposed to not miss the X when it’s not on the right corner, like very other DE, or the left corner, like Mac?

Sheesh.

Paul

In case you’ve missed it, Shuttleworth isn’t running things anymore. He appointed a new CEO. That CEO happens to be female. You might want to look her up – she’s pretty good looking. As for the colors – well, this is one way to feminize a Linux distro. Women can oooh and aaaah over the pretty purples, and oranges, and those “warm” colors. Me? My desktop will still be brown, or black, or some variation thereof. I can’t see the colors anyway. And, after 5 1/2 decades on this planet, I STILL don’t understand how a color can be “warm” or “cool”. Colors are bright, or they are less bright, unless you’re standing next to a fire. Then, it doesn’t matter whether the flame is blue, red, orange, or yellow, it’s going to catch your pants on fire if you’re not careful!!

anonymous

It’s been said before that is not the definition of Fitt’s Law. Fitt applies to the edge of a physical display, not the edge of rectangle windows.

The left-side window button may be a bad idea, but don’t toss around terms just for the heck of it to support your argument.

Ubuntu needed a brand refresh, but ripping off OS X wholesale wasn’t the way to go. Go more blue, less purple, and make the window tops smaller.

http://flyingsquirrel.ca Darcy Casselman

I have to say I always really, really liked the three-colour circle of friends logo. To me, it represents diversity, equality and community–important qualities that differentiated Ubuntu from other brands with a single-minded technology focus.

I think the wordmark is an improvement, but I hate to see the logo de-emphasized and made monotone kind of makes me sad.

http://www.techenclave.com/open-source-and-linux/ubuntu-gets-new-look-new-logo-161206.html#post1428997 Ubuntu gets new look with new logo – Open Source and Linux | TechEnclave

[…] Re: Ubuntu gets new look with new logo plymouth will also work with nvidia proprietary driver just that you need to run vesa framebuffer kernel module (which will happen auto i believe) and the "mode set" will not be smooth thats all. related to the topic, check out: Bye Bye Brown | popey.com blog Refreshing The Ubuntu Brand|jonobacon@home […]

Sten T

It looks a lot better. Never mind the os-x haters who see the connection. I think that the Karmic one looks like windows 95… even worse. Rather a bit like osx than windows. ppl can use kubuntu if they like the seetrough zillion colour style like watching rainbow after eating magic mushrooms. And I think, that its original and will attract new ppl to come over like I did 6 months ago.

Just a question: Are you workin on a new icon theme? The toolbar button icons look terrible. No unity or single line. One green, yellow, red… orange brown aso. Plus the icons could use more modern hi-color looks with shading and shine.

Just really hope that lucid wont look like karmic with new theme on it. Those window corners look awful.

anyways – Really nice job… luv the new logo and the progress is in the right direction.

Sid

Please dont move the common window controls by default. I’ve advised people (not very computer literate) to use Ubuntu after their virus disasters with Windows and if these standard conventions change, it WILL confuse users. Personally I really don’t care too much about themes, although I did think the last update (to browns) was an improvement. I’ll have to check the new one out when I get home.

I think all OS’s should actually ask the user what they want the machine to do when they install it. That way people could really end up with a personal computer / media center. I guess that it would be worth being able to re-run the setup and change at any time.

diogo

“Never mind the os-x haters”

When you say “mac-haters” you are talking about Ubuntu users.

Took a long time to Ubuntu develop the Human Brown theme. It was horrible. Now (9.10) it´s mature and really beautiful.

But now mac-lovers got their chance on free software. They see a good opportunity to transforme everything into ‘beautiful’. Beautiful as their desktops.

With the X button in the upper right corner, if a window is maximized or at the top of the screen, you can just go to the very corner of the display and click to close. Note: even though there are a few pixels of margin between the X and the edge, Ubuntu still highlights the X button.

This doesn’t work if you cram all the buttons to the left.

A generalization on Fitt’s law might be the more stuff you have in a close area, the harder it is to activate a given button.

@simone: Those nautilus mock ups look GREAT! That is exactly what they should be targeting.

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

The current look is fine; the new purple wallpaper is ugly.

As for toolbar buttons, are you talking about the standard GNOME buttons used in Nautilus, gedit, and others?

Those are great. I especially like the New button (a green plus sign). The Save button is nice because it has not just a disk, but an arrow pointed towards the disk.

The icons have subtle colors, shadows, gradients, and intuitiveness. What more do we need?

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

No kidding. Some of the Ubuntu developers don’t even use Ubuntu as their main desktop. Rather, they use Mac, and want to make Ubuntu into a clone of the Macintosh. Well, you can already do that with certain themes, you don’t need to put that into the default.

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

Actually, I think the “window tops” (title bars + menu bar combined) are the same height as in Karmic.

It’s only the fact that everything is mushed together on the left that makes it look taller.

That’s just completely wrong. Fitt’s law has nothing to do with screen edges whatsoever, it has to do with distance and size of a target. Fitt’s law only gets quoted in relation to screen edges, because those are particularly efficient due to the infinite size when used with an input device like a mouse.

The most direct way Fitt’s law applies in this case is that the buttons are tiny… Compared to the current title buttons, which are extra-wide for efficiency and comfort.

But more importantly, it is really not well designed. The theme could certainly work, but I can’t see it happening with this window decoration. It is also so different in quality to the design of the panel, that I wonder if there is any unified visual design behind it at all.

[…] Jono Bacon, Alan Pope, and many others have written, yesterday we published a new visual story and style for Ubuntu. The core design work was lead by Marcus Haslam, Otto Greenslade and Dominic Edmunds, who are the three visual artists leading our efforts in the Canonical Design team. Once we had the base ideas in place we invited some anchor members of the Ubuntu Art community to a design sprint, to test that the concept had the legs to work with the full range of forums, websites, derivatives and other pieces of this huge and wonderful project. And apparently, it does! […]

liam

Interesting choice for a color scheme. The purplish hue is, to my knowledge, unique to Ubuntu, and provides enough contrast to the primary color of, well, looks like a beige with some orange.
The window buttons, however, are not great. From my experience small buttons that control the action of a window are hard to find. I am going to not mention good ‘ole Fitt b/c I don’t believe that it is applicable IF the buttons are of a sufficient size. Look at the New Wave theme. To me, that is extremely usable. Its close button is in the corner, but, more importantly, it is twice the size of the min/max buttons.
I do like the fact that the choice was made to make the close button a different color from the rest. Very nice. The hollowed-out area that surrounds the buttons was also a very nice touch. A nice way of containing, thus separating, the window control buttons. I also liked the, to me, logical arrangement of the buttons(though the order, I think, is wrong, as is the arrangement with the buttons on the left — while having them and the current shutdown system button on the top right corner isn’t ideal, currently, it will be much worse when Gnome Shell arrives, assuming it is adopted;additionally, having the close button be closest to the window title is dangerous especially since the choice was made to left align the window a title, a natural place for people to grab a window(basically a target) — the idea of arranging the buttons with close on one side, and max on the other, gives it a logical-window-state spread of “openness”, with max being most “open”, etc, and having the buttons on the left puts all window functions on the same side of the screen[the max/min/close buttons, and the file, edit, whatever menus]).
Really, the thing that most stands out, to me, is the upper right corner of the window. It looks like the Sahara. Moving the buttons back to the right would distribute the visuals a bit more and not give the impression of such a large amount of wasted chrome.

Best/Liam

esteban

My first impression – horrible colors – Not better than the old design.

Focus

Of the four key values you listed, Reliability should be number one.

In fact, I’d say that Reliability should be the ONLY one. Focused on exclusively, with the other values put to the side, until it improves.

This is the main problem with Ubuntu. Reliability, compatibility, usability. Not the theme. Not boot time. Not any of the other things trumpeted with each release.

If the base of the operating system still doesn’t work right, why is anyone wasting any time whatsoever thinking about the theme?

anonymous

Excellent point Daniel, and I stand corrected about Fitt’s Law.

However, there’s no reason we can’t both be wrong — obviously which side of the window the buttons are on still has nothing to do with Fitt’s Law.

Karl

The new theme is ok, but what worries me more is this:

“…de facto standard way that people build and consume software.”

Consume? Running a computer program does not consume it, you can always run it again. You can’t consume a slice of pizza twice.

“We celebrate the work of other groups committed to collaborative content development, and open content licensing”

Content? You mean to tell me that the massive efforts of Free Software development and the fruits of human creativity are nothing more than content, something that just fills up a box?

Sorry to nag about this, but those terms just feel disrespectful to Human culture, Free Software and Ubuntu.

specnaz

A major step in wrong direction. For me the message goes like that : ” If you squint long enough you can fool yourself it’s mac” .

zoro

@jono: Are there any plans for the development of the CSD branch (Client Side Decorations) of Gtk+?

I think if the goal is to “make Linux beautiful”, ubuntu dev team has to go hard at develop a revolution in the Gtk+ theming code.

Even a brand new gtk/metacity theme isn’t enough. There is too much legacy code. The themes at gnome-look.org are all quite similar (they’ve got the same tight constraints), and probably some of them are better than this one.

I liked the effort on the gnome-panel by the Ayatana project, now everything else on the screen remains to be done O:-)

PS. Please put the three window buttons back on the right ^^

Sakari Koivunen

I’m happy to see Ubuntu brand and desktop evolving!

However, I believe you need to be very careful when it comes to doing fundamental UI changes like moving window controls from upper right corner to upper left corner. I don’t know if it’s just a random theme on the screenshot or is it something you are planning for 10.4.

I honestly can’t see a single good reason for moving the controls. It would only confuse me. “If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it” is a perfectly fine phrase here.

I like the new logo. Some of the designs on Brand2 page look very stylish and professional to me. Very good work here!

If you are going to change the UI, why not work on something else than moving window controls to “wrong” place? Nautilus is shown in the screenshots and I’m kind of sad to see that there are no real changes to the UI itself if you don’t count the minimize-maximize-close buttons.

Let’s start with back and forward. I never use them. Maybe someone is using them, but I would still think about removing them to streamline the UI and make it look less complicated.

Why do we have the “up” arrow? We already have the full path shown right below it. Just click on the path if you want to go up one level.

Stop sign. What purpose does it serve? I have never used it, nor have I ever seen anyone else use it. Is it really required on the file browser?

Reload, why not. It might be useful sometimes.

Home is useless duplicate of the home folder on places view on the left. I would remove the computer icon too and use places instead.

For some reason there is no search in the screenshot. People are used to Firefox-like search bar, I would like to see it in Nautilus too.

The theme in general could use some love. I can’t tell why exactly, but I just don’t feel like I love it. It’s quite nice, but not as awesome and rocking as it should be.

Count Duckula

Is the new colour scheme etc a way to deflect the bloat and creeping unstablility found in the last few releases of this OS.

I will try 10.04 on release but if the screenies are a taste of things to come then it wont last long on my PC.

Jono, I like the new rebranding for Ubuntu and Canonical and love the new font (absolutely do) but seeing orange an do purple together makes me cringe. Them separate is stunning, especially with the new logo/font.

Now I have no idea what is going on with that new theme though. Why on EARTH are you switching the controls from the right to the left. You’re reversing 20+ years of computer interface paradigm for no reason. It’s okay for the Mac, but this is Linux and no one else puts their controls on the left. No is going to like it and everyone will switch it. Especially corporations – think training.

Now if only you would switch the default font of the whole desktop from Sans to Myriad Pro Condensed or a similar free font, then we’d be talking.

Thus new branding/font good, new colours good on their own but a big no to the new theme.

http://blog.revealedsingularity.net Philip Kahn

Please make sure that you retain a taskbar — OSX’s loss of it is an abhorrent design decision, as is this. You should be able to easily manage your open qindows. If you want, you could try throwing in Windows 7-style taskbar of thumbnails if you don’t like names.

Also, move the window controls to the right. They’re too close to the menus as-is.

Aditya

Love the new branding and the monochrome panel.

Has there been any thought put into consolidating the brand under the “ubuntu” umbrella. By that I mean going from <ubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu, ubuntu studio, mythbuntu> to (just examples).

Even though this resembles the multitude of Win7 editions and is not ideal, it seems better than the current fragmentation of the ubuntu brandname.

Aditya

Sorry for the repost, part of the original comment did not appear

Love the new branding and the monochrome panel.

Has there been any thought put into consolidating the brand under the “ubuntu” umbrella. By that I mean going from ubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu, ubuntu studio, mythbuntu to ubuntu home, ubuntu pro, ubuntu lite, ubuntu creative, ubuntu entertainment, etc(just examples).

Even though this resembles the multitude of Win7 editions and is not ideal, it seems better than the current fragmentation of the ubuntu brandname.

magib

The rounded corners are nice! Good job ubuntu!

BROWN FTW

I liked the brown…
Also, could designers stop ripping off Apple for once in 3+ decades?!

For those who think this is for the worse, you can keep the old orange theme you never used anyway. Its not like they started using a Windows kernel or started charging $10 a download. Most users change their theme and start customizing within 5 minutes of a fresh install. To me, this feels modern and new. Very fresh. While purple and orange may not work for all, I think its way more smooth and inviting that previous themes. This is a huge huge selling point for most ‘normal’ computer users. They care about speed, looks, applications and stability (probably in that order too). My desktop looks very similar to this now so I may be biased but in any case this is a huge win for Ubuntu and it’s community. Keep up the great work.

http://www.jeffreychew.net/?p=61 MLMSP LIVE on 3 March 2010 :Jeffrey Chew

[…] Refreshing The Ubuntu Brand | jonobacon@home […]

David S9

it lost its personality, big mistake.
it looks very much like a mac. as a result it looks like is trying to copy rather than innovate.

hope this is not the final look
i’m one of those guys who like human and new wave themes by the way.
The black theme is ok

David S9

I forgot the new font in the other hand is bonkers! i love it n.n

http://anon.com anon

yuck

http://jasonmillerdesign.com/ Jason Miller

I wish everyone would be more open to change regarding the position of the window controls. You all are complaining that Nautilus looks the same as always, but then when one other core part of the OS is changed the response is “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.

Does that make any sense? How can a User Interface (something of a subjective matter in most cases) be “broken”? Certainly usability could be broken – but what on earth does arbitrary button placement have to do with usability? Nothing.

For one thing, you would think Ubuntu users would be thrilled to move away from a paradigm made popular by Windows. Bear in mind, Microsoft placed the buttons there with absolutely no thought to usability – so did Apple. That’s because it absolutely doesn’t matter.

What does matter, however, is that it is impossible to make a global change to the interaction model without stirring up needless conflict.

Perhaps if everyone tried having the buttons on the left side, they might actually like it. I have been moving them there manually since I first started using Ubuntu.

http://jasonmillerdesign.com/ Jason Miller

Seconded. I think the non-vocal portion of the community would be in favor of the increased simplicity presented here.

http://jasonmillerdesign.com/ Jason Miller

They are too close to the menu because the menu is poorly placed. No thought was put into its location, it was simply injected into the top of every window because that’s how Microsoft taught people to do it.

http://scribblewish.net Annika

I don’t see what all the fuss is about in terms of color.

I’ll miss the brown and orange theme, but I’m sure it’ll be tacked on into the bundle of themes Ubuntu comes with anyway. So if you don’t like the new theme, just switch it.

As far as color choice, I honestly like the purple and orange look. It’s definitely unique, and gives a nice twist to the dull brown.

I can’t say that I like the minimize / close etc buttons to the left though. Most of us are right-handed. Hmm.

http://tecnopata507.wordpress.com gadget00

Well, i really loved the new “corporate colors” indeed! BUT the panel icons resemble mac a lot. Maybe Mac has the most ubiquitous and indicated icons for wifi and bluetooth(we can’t blame them for that)…

One thing I hope you can finally redo this time is the size of the system fonts and icons; they keep on being too big and that takes away screen real estate. In this case, Windows and Mac I believe use pretty precise sizes that make the screen not too cluttered with just 2 windows and a menu (like the screenshots).
Besides this, I’m waiting for it!!

PS: tell the developers to check the hibernation AGAIN; it worked flawlessly on 9.04 and now with the upgrade it gives me a scrambled coloured screen when finishes booting.

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

OK, I’ll grant you that.

Now consider that Fitts’ law does apply (for a lot of people) at least in one dimension.

You can see from web server statistics that most people have 1024×1280 screens. Most people do not have huge 1900×1200 or even larger displays. Given that, if their windows aren’t maximized in both axes, they will be in one (such as stretched to the full horizontal width of the screen).

So, currently, what you can do is just go all the way to the right, and then slide upward until the X is highlighted.

Easy. Fast.

Compare that with navigating to a precise position to close a window.

Note: Windows 95 didn’t used to highlight corner buttons if you were a few pixels off. That was later fixed. It should be fixed in Ubuntu if it doesn’t work in certain configurations.

http://digitivity.org Digitivity

A system global menu made sense for wee Macs back in the day. But there’s a lot of mouse movement back and forth you have to do if you have any of the popular screen sizes of today.

Not to mention the fact that you are forcing people to constant shift visual focus from one area of the screen to another.

If you have a portrait layout, you are also forced to actually constantly move your neck too. That’s OK for opening an app (once every 15 min or so). But not every minute performing a menu action.

I love the colour scheme but… do the window control buttons REALLY have to be on the left side?… it’s unnatural!

Also, I agree with the others who complained it looks like Mac… at least the Human theme has some personality…

Zac

I liked it yesterday and still do.

The panel icons look smart and not distracting.

Window controls on the left make more sense. Less mouse movement and next to the power button (when window is maximised)

Some say ‘looks like Mac’ with the panel icons style and window buttons. So what. It’s more efficient and looks better. Also, I have a Mac, and it doesn’t look like the above screen shots, I don’t know people are talking about. I know, window controls buttons on the right, oh now it looks like windows. Ridiculous.

I repeat, it looks nothing like a Mac. I know I have one. You take the best and use it.

[…] my favorite geek news site had an article about the updated user interface in the upcoming Ubuntu release. If you check out the pictures, you will notice that […]

finite9

I like the simplified splash screen a lot compared to 9.10; which is too graphically intensive for bootup in my opinion.

I don’t dislike the colours on their own, but I’m going to take a bit of convincing that purple and orange go well together, but the purple is quite nice! I don’t really see any immediate resemblance to Mac as the shade of purple is not the same (or is it)?

I am a true Ubuntu fan, but I think OpenSuse and Fedora have much much more professional looking bootups and themes than Ubuntu has, and I wish we could get up to their level. I especially miss the ability to ‘drop’ to a console during boot too see the text booup, and be able to escape out of it to get back to graphical bootup without loads of mode switching.

Have to agree with the other comments over the placement of controls. The thing is, that if you were designing a window GUI for the first time, it would be more logical to put them top-left, as that is where the File menu starts, then you can cluster the controls together and you only need to look at one spot in the window for controls. This is pehaps the reasoning behind the decision. However, we have had windows GUIs with controls on the right for decades, and to make this switch now, and being the only distribution that does so, is going to be very very hard to accept. Macs may do this, but they have done it for decades. Windows and Linux/UNIX users have been used to top-right controls for decades. I am skeptical as to whether this will be such a good idea.

Chris

Love the transparency on the tooltip. Colours are great, the default install will win many more users.

Its pretty shallow, but many users will judge an OS on the appearance of its default install. I think this colour scheme will draw more users than any single other thing ubuntu has done in the past.

My vote would be toward leaving the window controls on the right. The retraining of muscle memory isn’t worth any advantage to them being there. Also it may put off windows users.

Then again it may win over some people who like the mac look, which is looking to be more people every day.

Still, 1 vote here for right hand side.

Alex

Still looks crap, unfortunately.

Emil Koutanov

All that’s missing is the Apple logo.

http://serge.matveenko.ru Serge Matveenko

Sorry for posting this idea here.

I was talking with my friends about new Ubuntu user interface. And we have found a great idea to make the background of the oval zone under window buttons completely transparent. It will make buttons fly inside empty space inside window title. I think it will be exciting for newcomers:)

Sure, probably your choices would be much better. I advise you to apply as project manager of everything, your choices will bring everything on the right direction.

!Xobile

@ Salari

A reason would be not to copy the always present and always ready-to-lawsuite microsoft products. I mean, if there is no reason to put the buttons in this way, what is the reason that microsoft had to put them in the other way ? I believe it’s just a matter of alternatives and choices. It’s like writing systems: latin goes from left to right, arabic from right to left, some others use both ways, chinese used to go from the top to the bottom, and so on….. things change, evolve, and sometimes we don’t know (and probably we don’t need to).. the important thing is that the system will have its character and that will work well… I used many different OS in my life (AmigaOS, DOS, BeOS, Linux (kde, gnome, enlightnment), NeXT, Windows, and as far as they’re usable for our needs….who really care about default themes and stuff that I can freely customize?

[…] here’s the desktop from this announcement, and guess what? It’s exactly the same and still has all the problems it’s always […]

BigBert

Where is the Task bar?

Why aren’t the windows controls on the top right?

Jay

Love it, great new theme. It’s very unique, and I think the new button arrangement is perfect. I always use maximize/restore more often than the other buttons, so it makes perfect sense to order them that way.

I liked the brown theme before, but I have to say, as an artist, that the new colour theme is stunning and will definitely leave a good impression on new users.

My only quibble is with the scrollbar handle, I usually prefer it to be a darker colour than the rest of the bar so they stand out more.

Other than that small detail, great work. Any chance of a download so I can try out the theme in Karmic?

[…] shown by Jono Bacon (Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical), the massive revamp includes a new ‘lighter’ theme for […]

http://www.hackertarget.com Peter

No offence to whomever has put this together but it just looks like a random theme from gnome-look. There is nothing more professional or cleaner that is an improvement on the excellent current default theme.

http://www.theyankeegadfly.com TheYankeeGadfly

Regardless of what anyone has said, I would like to say thank you very much for all the effort you and your team makes.

Mark is NO Steve and if I wanted something that Steve would do I wouldn’t be using Ubuntu.

Who authorize these stupid usability nightmares!!

JD

not to be rude, but I don’t see this as an improvemnt really… It takes one ugly color and goes to another… Do you think apple or any company in there right mind would use purple or brown? No it looks ugly… Hire some real useablity folks because this isn’t working… I like the grey elemnts of the panel but the purple logo looks like some 5 year made it. Sorry but seeing this makes me want to go with another desktop os. I don’t think it will draw anyone. Just trying to give some tuff love so we can make progress here.

[…] As of the announcement of the new visual identity for Ubuntu, this work is obsolete and I removed the wiki page I used to link here. Possibly related posts: […]

http://www.lamalex.net/2010/03/anything-but-the-buttons/ Anything but the buttons, or how I learned to stop clicking and love Do at KILL THEM ALL AND LET A NORSE GOD SORT 'EM OUT

[…] know this is a controversial opinion, but I want to be one of the few to publicly announce that they love the window controls on the […]

Diego

+1000

AJenbo

Moving the buttons to the left seams odd, it doesn’t realy add any thing to either the design or the function.
Windows and linux users will be confused because it is now in the left side, and minimize and maximize have changed position.

Wow. Lots of feedback on the purple colour and the buttons in a different spot, etc. Apparently Linux peeps are very excited (and non-Linux peeps seem nervous) about the success of the new release.

But I must be missing something. Are we talking just about the new “default” appearance of Ubuntu 10.04…? If I don’t like the looks of it, I will change it with one of 100000++ themes out there. Or if I get fed up with the WM (i.e. Gnome) I will change it, too!

Is that not why one would run Linux: freedom of choice and flexibility?

On Gnome, I would loved to have seen the new Gnome in this release. Now that would be a game changing event compared to Windows and Mac!

Overall, I think the guys did a great job on putting out an updated product and I am looking forward to it.

Ian Bennett

I feel people are following the wrong track. When developers become wrapped around the axles about how a distro looks rather than how it performs, you end up with KDE4.
The team needs to be kicked up the backside and told to focus on what really matters to users; a functional and stable desktop environment.

Mal

Well done with the new branding – I like it.

Regarding the window controls, there is actually a good reason to avoid putting controls in the top left corner – the move to Gnome Shell makes the top left of the screen a hot spot for activating the shell overview mode. It is likely to be annoying if this is hit accidentally when aiming for other controls in the top left of a maximised application window.

Rob Candee

Please! Leave the controls where your users, and the vast majority of your prospective users, are used to having them – top right!

An easy-to-use (easy-to-find) means for the individual to change them from right to left could be made available. With the current alpha 3, however, I can find nothing in the Preferences menu that allows a user to change the controls back to the right!

Petar

I thought it was just me, but happy to read that someone else has the same “problem”. The orange icons somehow don’t look well with this new theme. I am not sure what is wrong, I am far from a graphical expert. But the first thing that comes to my mind is that I would try to desaturate them a little bit(or more than little bit). Yet again that might not help at all, or even make things worse, but I really hope this is not the final theme we are going to have in 10.04.

Petar

I don’t care about Mac users, I care about myself :). One word – CONFUSING. I already tried similar theme (or the same theme) in 9.10, taken from a some ppa, called Radiance (name of the theme, not the ppa). It freaked me when I saw the buttons moved and thought that the theme was broken. And changing to other themes didn’t help because the buttons remained on the left side. I rebooted twice trying to “mend the problem” until I realised that I can change back to the old button layout with Ubuntu Tweak. Thanks, but no thanks. I think it’s a bad idea.

Jamie

Gah. The window controls on the left are not merely a cosmetic change.

They’re a user interface regression. Microsoft didn’t put them on the top right in Windows 95 just to make a new look, you know. They did usability studies…

They are now less usable because (from most significant to least):

By far the most common operation, close, is no longer at a window corner. So you can’t close a full-screen or butted-up-against-the-screen window without looking at the screen now. Before you could just move the mouse without looking, move back a little, and it’d work. You didn’t have to pay attention to the screen. That means it’s a slower operation requiring more mental and physical effort than before. Bad interface!

It does not match the placement of the close button in applications, like Firefox and Gnome Terminal’s tabs. Left-ish for windows and right for tabs is an unhelpful inconsistency.

Now it’s easier to accidentally hit a pull-down menu instead when you aren’t paying attention, because they are close together. Before it was a safe bet that if you missed the close button, you’d have no effect, or harmlessly maximise. And you’d be more likely to hit it, anyway, with less visual clutter from other window elements which tend to be on the left, below the window title bar. Now you have to pay closer attention to avoid making a mistake. See 1.

Muscle memory from before. Is there any benefit to the change, or is this one change for the sake of change?

It used to be easy to close a window without really looking at it, with peripheral vision and an imprecise mouse movement. Now it’s a slower, more complicated operation: That’s annoying.

Although change is something people can get used to, I do think this is still a less usable layout after getting used to it.

I looked through the Appearances and Windows and other settings for how to change this back, and didn’t find any setting for it.

What I did see, though, is that all the many themes I have installed (from the last few years of running Ubuntu – they accumulate) have the window icons on the right. Fwiw, the theme preferences graphics don’t match reality now. I guess they will be fixed eventually – but I hope the buttons are simply moved back to where they were.

And if they’re not moved back, please organise the buttons on the left as: Close (by far the most common), Maximise, Minimise.

And if you do that, please add a straightforward tick box under Appearances to change it.

Thanks…

Scudis

Users commenting here that doesnt like the new default theme have the ability to change it (and probably would anyways!) It’s silly to criticize just because it’s not your cup of tea.

I think this new theme is great for newcommers and i did droped my old selfmade them in favor of the default.

Now, it really resembles Mac OSX. And I do have a mac, so i too know what i’m talking about! I dont think it’s a bad thing to get inspired by things that work on other OS, but I would like to see Ubuntu growing some personality over those elements.

woot

I don’t like it, it is too much MacOS alike and way too dark. It breaks down Ubuntu’s identity. If the looks change in this direction I will definitely look for another look or another operating system!

http://worldgeekt.musicblogsg.info/2010/03/08/the-new-ubuntu-design/ The new Ubuntu design | World Geek

[…] Jono Bacon, the community manager of Ubuntu, made yesterday public the aspect of this new topic that will use the next version: ‘Light’. And along with […]

http://blulin.wordpress.com bhuvi

maybe ubuntu should try copying looks from fedora or open suse or linux mint etc

MileZero

I like it. The new font/button/color theme is just fine.

To all: stop whining about button placement and supposed similarities to Apple. Buttons on the right work for Windows users without real issue. Buttons on the left work for Apple users without real issue. I would bet the Gnome taskbar from the bottom will be integrated into the top bar when all is said and done.

[…] plans for future… Knowing that ubuntu.com will get re-branded, I’m interested to continue the wordpress-loco development to reflect new brand changes. […]

Petr Topiarz

Please, dear Canonical, do not make Ubuntu another “mac”. Remember the look of 2007.10 ? That was something! Come back where we belong! Please do not lose your community by copying Mr.McIntosh.
Thank you
Peter

Petar

Oh. I know, let’s put ours in the middle Dear MileZero, stop preaching others. Canonical talked about the new theme for almost 2 years and if this is all they could do, then we have a serious problem. We were promised a WOW effect, and this theme is far from it. After realising that I do have this theme in Ubuntu 9.10 (installed from a ppa), a took a closer look to it. What I like from this theme the most, are the monochromatic status icons. What I hate about it is the Aubergine (purple) color of the tooltips. It might go well with the desktop background on the pictures (a thing that reminds me of an Apple Mac, although I have never owned one!?!), but change the background and you get this ugly colour that doesn’t match anything else in the theme. So I tweaked it to orange in order to match the orange colour appearing in some of the GUI controls, the Volume slider for example. The orange looks cool for the new Ubuntu logo, but it’s a bit too intensive for the desktop theme (at least according to my taste). As for the new personality of Ubuntu – Light, sorry but I don’t see it in this theme.

http://ovroniil.wordpress.com Ovroniil

It’s seems Ubuntu has thrown away it’s identity to be more ‘MAC’ish! Why Ubuntu has to copy the upper panel icons and colors from Mac OSX? Windows has it’s own identity, so does Mac; but where is the distinctive identity of Ubuntu? Doesn’t it looks like ubuntu is suffering from it’s own identity crisis?

What about the changes of icons (systems, folders, navigation etc.)? Hasn’t the time come to change them too? The Humanity icons are looking very toyish comparing to the new theme(s).

All the complaints about the window manager, the color scheme, etc. are really quite petty, literally everything about the ubuntu desktop is already configurable to look just like this through the use of gnome themes or running a different window manager.

If you don’t like the ‘design decisions’ of gnome, ubuntu or OS X (the comparisons, by the way, are absurd – the location and shape of the default window controls does not make an OS) then obviously you don’t use that window manager, duh… whining on the comments thread of the community manager only proves that you’re a total snot.

[…] new default theme and updated logo was officially announced on 3rd March by the community manager Jono bacon. The changes will appear with the release of Ubuntu 10.4 LTS coded Lucid Lynx. Look up the official […]

Job M

For Ubuntu to really make an impact on the desktop environment/theme Canonical will have to get to work and come up with something revolutionary in the e17 style. Don’t copy OSX and stay way from Microsoft.
Color change, moving buttons, copying OSX don’t cut it.

kyteflyer

For those complaining that its too much like OSX… have you actually used OSX? Its nothing like it except for the button placement on the left. I’m a mac user… and I still prefer right sided placement. But I am right handed and I think it has more to with that, than anything. For that same reason I would prefer icons to be on the right side of the screen (Like OSX which this new set of themes is NOT). I played with it in Lucid Lynx alpha 3. Don’t like it, sticking with KK for the moment.

Mohnish

I agree with others to move the windows controls to the right. Why is everything being moved to the left while there’s ample empty space on the right?

http://www.themacaque.com/?p=524 Quick UI update | Macaque Project

[…] a very quick update. All my current work has been focused on the design of the UI, which is quite appropriate right […]

[…] and perhaps most popularly, not brown. Jono Bacon, Canonical’s community manager, broke the news. Mark Shuttleworth followed up on his own blog, thanking three members of the design team for […]

Ras

Because of Beyonce.

http://atomized.org/2010/03/why-i%e2%80%99m-not-switching-back-to-linux-any-time-soon/ ? Why I’m Not Switching Back To Linux Any Time Soon

[…] is the updated Ubuntu File […]

http://happy.cat/blog/ Adam Hayward

What the heck … the window controls are on the left! That will take some getting used to

Oscar

Hello friends, this is perhaps the most radical update to the linux world so far, it’s refreshing to experience the texture, color, velvety, a luxury for the senses.
interface very similar to Mac OSX.
see you soon.

http://google.com Olsen

Seems like the windows controls are in the wrong place, or at least not correctly ordered. Hope this won’t be the default theme as that would be annoying.

[…] day I read “Refreshing The Ubuntu Brand“, upcoming visual style changes for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and my only comment to this whole […]

The wtffer

Erm, is this supposed to be a good change? Going to the apple direction is not a good one, imo. Ugly and unintuitive.

http://mf-lug.org/mf/?p=310 Light: the new look of Ubuntu

[…] Jono Bacon, Alan Pope, and many others have written, yesterday we published a new visual story and style for Ubuntu. The core design work was lead by Marcus Haslam, Otto Greenslade and Dominic Edmunds, who are the three visual artists leading our efforts in the Canonical Design team. Once we had the base ideas in place we invited some anchor members of the Ubuntu Art community to a design sprint, to test that the concept had the legs to work with the full range of forums, websites, derivatives and other pieces of this huge and wonderful project. And apparently, it does! […]

Are Linux people really that religious and do they really believe what they write?

http://antaeus.dk Andreas

I am fearing so.

Ubuntu = Mac OSX wannabe.

Go Debian or LinuxMint.

markc

What a horrible mishmash of colors. Isn’t it obvious that if you are going for an aubergine eggplant color for the background (which is basically a fine choice) then most of the other highlights should also be variations of aubergine as well?

Hello, color/colour 101 calling.

I don’t get it, how can a whole bunch of smart and talented people get something as basic as “color matching” so wrong.

[…] with this, a comparatively innocuous first comment on the new artwork for Ubuntu 10.04, a veritable shitstorm of criticism has rolled across the web […]

Matheus Gadelha

Come on guys! Open your minds. I think this is a great work. Congratulations!

http://librefan.eu.org/ libre fan

Hello,

I like Ubuntu but I’m beginning to be a little wary.

What was wrong with the former font?

What’s the point in aping Apple’s colors (as people claim)?

And above all, what’s the point of emphasizing Lightness while the OS is nolonger light at all?

Since Hardy I’ve had to hunt after light distros. Even Xubuntu is too heavy for older computers.

However, if you mean Ubuntu is lighter than M$ or Apple, this is still true, of course. Thank GNU/Linux for that.

frogdos

different strokes for different folks. personally, i’m looking forward to getting my sticky mitts on it. ubuntu is the perfect os for me. whether firtling or working. A big thank you to everybody involved with producing ubuntu.

Jesse

“Isn’t it obvious that if you are going for an aubergine eggplant color for the background then most of the other highlights should also be variations of aubergine as well?”

Umm… no. It is common to choose two base colors to complement each other. It’s a reasonable alternative to a more monochromatic color scheme. You don’t have to like Canonical’s specific choices, but the basic idea valid.

[…] of Ubuntu, the popular and easy to use free operating system (like Windows or Mac OSX) will get a whole new look in its April release; 10.04 (known colloquially as “Lucid Lynx”). The look includes an […]

Alex

I hate Apple. Every Linux dood hates it.

I like the menu bar, but the close/maximise bar looks like shit. It’s so ugly!

http://? Tony

I don’t like it. Is there not a talented artist you could approach in the Ubuntu community to create a proper stylish logo and typeface Ubuntu?
The typeface looks out dated. Circa year 2002.

I have not used Ubuntu in several years, well, since 2002. The progress they have made since then is outstanding. However, I do a lot of web design and image work and was wondering if Ubuntu offers a better solution than Windows 7. What’s your take on this? Is there good image manipulation programs for Ubuntu now?

http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/he-mark/ He-Mark « Thorwil's

[…] but here’s a drawing in wallpaper format in celebration of the Ubuntu 10.04 release and the new visual identity that made its first real appearance with […]

http://hosting.informoney.net mike

I like it. Ubuntu is perfect for HTPC, is this new look gives it a modern flavour.

http://www.hw-brands.com Tomer

Thanks for the info ,I think Ubuntu is perfect for HTPC.

http://www.benjaminkohl.com Benjamin

If you think Ubuntu 10.04 is ugly, go check out the new http://www.ubuntu.com. The use of an orange and purple color scheme along with lots of lined and dotted backgrounds looks awful.

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